Watchers (1988)

Very well executed

Absolutely amazing

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The other reviewer pretty much nailed it -- if you read the book, this movie will bring you to tears, and the book was never intended to be a tear-jerker. Here is the issue: Hollywood has never, even on its best day, done an especially good job of adapting these sorts of stories. Look at the mess they made with Stephen King (a very odd author who, history may well record, "peaked" in the 1980s -- and no one bothered to tell him). After butchering one King novel after another, after another -- and even trying "cheap movie tricks" like getting the author to adapt his own material, a clear sign of desperation! -- ultimately King's newest stuff ended up in miniseries only, with not even a pretence of making it to the big screen. My point? Well regardless of which author you favour (and Koontz has an army of fans, or, at least, used to) if they could not manage to bring King to the screen, you can only guess what a mess they made of Koontz. This is widely held to be his best work -- a brilliant suspense tail (pun!) that incorporates one of the best "dog" roles ever -- and essentially they shot themselves in the foot before even the first reel was in the camera. Packaged as a B movie, with Corey Haim (?) and Michael Ironside, this film was over before it even began. Don't see this, don't rent it, don't stream it, don't download it and -- depending on what decade or century it is when you access this IMDb entry -- don't even have it beamed directly into your cortex. Read the book.

Lem (Michael Ironside) is tasked with finding an experimental dog that escaped from a government facility, not knowing that a teenager, Travis (the late Corey Haim) has since, reluctantly, 'adopted' the dog for his own. However, a second escapee, this one much less benevolent, is also on the loose.Hollywood has had a history of screwing up Dean Koontz's source material. The later more abysmal "Hidaway" would further prove that sad fact. So coming at this film as a bastardized adaptation of his novel would be like shooting fish in a barrel. As such, I won't and shall try to take this movie on its own merits (or more appropriately, lack there of) Starting with the main gripe against this movie, simple and trite dialog (specifically, the banter between Travis, his mom and the dog is cringe-worthy and borders sitcom-level awfulness) quite frankly, the only actor that even attempts to not embarrass himself in this movie is Ironside himself, yet sadly he finds that goal foiled at every turn. One could only imagine what would have been if the writers strike didn't adversely affect the quality of this movie. But what is is and what is, isn't good.

No one has ever argued that Koontz is the second coming of Shakespeare. But the man has put out some very entertaining and intriguing (albeit formulamatic) horror novels.Yet, when they decided to make Watchers (one of his more thoughtful and provoking title) did the writer of the screenplay say "Hey! Why don't we change the story and make it a teen slasher AND use it as a Coerey Haim vehicle!? I will tell you why! Because it made it suck!They changed the whole plot, setting and most of the story and basically forced the audience to watch teen pretty boy Haim, doe-eye his way through a performance.

Watchers (1988) ** (out of 4) Apparently we shouldn't trust any government agencies. Out in the middle of nowhere the government is trying to create superhuman creatures that they can use for war. Two creatures are created one being a Golden Retriever who has been taught pretty much everything a human can do. This includes answering questions, being able to type and best of all he can retrieve his own food. The second creature is a Bigfoot type creature known as an Oxcom. The secret is that the dog would go into the enemy's camp to find targets then the Oxcom would follow and kill whatever is by the dog.However another government agencies tries to destroy this project and blows up the building where the two are being held but neither are killed and they both head off into the woods. The dog has the advantage but the Oxcom is close behind and ready to kill whoever the dog goes near. The dog eventually ends up with 16-year-old Travis (Corey Haim) who takes a liking to the animal and also understands how smart it is. While all of this is going on the Oxcom is stalking and killing people all over the county. Meanwhile the government agents, head by Michael Ironside, shows up to track the creatures down.Watchers is based on the novel by Dean Koontz but I haven't read it so I'm not sure how close the movie follows things. The executive producer was Roger Corman so that there should tell you what type of film this is going to be. If you've seen any of the low-budget drive-in shockers from the 1950's then you've pretty much seen this film. This film plays out exactly like all the others, although this here does have a few good aspects but there isn't enough to make the film worth watching.The biggest problem is that the film is simply too cute to really be a horror film. The dog in the film is so darn lovable that you really can't take your eyes off of him and the scenes between him and Haim seem like something you'd see in a Disney film and not a gory horror movie. I'm actually a fan of Haim but he's also a problem here due to the rather silly performance. Most of the time he's trying to act tough but it comes off laughable especially the silly ending, which seems like something Rambo should be doing.As I mentioned earlier this film plays out just like the monster movies from the 1950's and this is a problem. The director uses Corman's trick of not showing the monster too much throughout the film, which is fine if the movie runs a little over an hour but coming in at 92-minutes the film simply runs out of steam very early making the rest of the film drag along without anything interesting happening. The story is laughable and not too believable but this could have been overlooked had the viewer ever feared the actual creature. That's not the case so there's very little here except for the cute dog.